Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Old and inadequate. Those are the two words for the day.

I felt old at two different points last night. The first one, was while watching ESPN, and at the bottom of the screen I saw that Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon were two of several men to be inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame. In between showing highlights of their brilliant careers, ESPN also showed both men in suits, looking older than they did in their playing days, but not too old. They both had suits on, and it just made me sad. Not because they are bums or they aren't doing anything with their lives, but more so because I remember these guys playing in college. I can remember watching them at the University Houston and Georgetown respectively in the early to mid 80s, and I remember my dad watching with me, while I had my college basketball magazines sprawled out in front of me so I would know who every player around these two giants were. So to see these two men retired and damn near immortalized in the Hall of Fame just made me feel old..

And then, as if seeing Olajuwon and Ewing weren't enough, while I was watching Kansas defeat Memphis in last night's title game, I felt even older. It wasn't the fact that these kids were running up and down at a pace that I really can't keep up at this point, but it had everything to do with the years these kids were born. While I was looking up the bios of some of these guys, I noticed that all of them were born between 1987 and 1990, which blows my mind. I mean I realize someone had to be born during that time, but it hits you a different way when you see kids who may be in the NBA born that short of a time ago. During those years, I was listening to Public Enemy, attending Jack and Jill conferences, and discovering the wonderful tricks my genitalia could perform, and how dare these kids come into the world during that time. I know this sounds cranky, but I think incredulous captures it a little better.

Oh, and I am feeling inadequate about the layout of my blog. I've seen many blogs over the past few weeks, and their layouts are pretty impressive, and I can honestly say I'm way too lazy to upgrade, but it does gnaw at me that I'm lagging behind in this department. Perhaps I'll recruit someone to upgrade me in that department. Until then, I'll continue to say that my blog is about content, not bells and whistles. That will mask my shortcomings for now.

And I'd be miss and miss again (remiss I think it’s called) if I didn't mention that my ladyfriend kicked my monkey ass in Scrabble last night. She attempted to hide the scorecard so she could scan it, photograph it, or whatever, but I was hip to her game, and I flushed that scorecard down the toilet like it a dead cricket. It’s nice to know the sore loser in me never goes away.